


the cause and the cure

by hissingmiseries



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: "I Have Never Done Anything Wrong Ever In My Life", "I Know This And I Love You", Angst and Fluff and Smut, Canon Universe, Chaptered, Everybody Else Gives Bad Relationship Advice, F/F, Jedi Rey, Jessika Has Big Strap Energy, Mutual Pining, Not Canon Compliant, Smuggler Jessika Pava
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-05 13:33:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18829669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hissingmiseries/pseuds/hissingmiseries
Summary: Realistically it is probably only a second. But it feels like an eternity to Rey. It feels like time stops, just for a moment: like it slows down and grinds to a halt and everything falls at the wayside of the woman on the swoop bike, the one who is lowering the binoculars and looking at Rey like she's an angel, like she's not real.Everything is quiet. It's just them, and their breathing, and the Force rushing through Rey's veins like a dam has burst.And then the recognition comes, like a punch in the chest. The freckles, the red bandana around her forehead, the cat-like bow of her lips.Oh, Rey thinks.There you are. I've been dreaming about you.





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> a gift for the beautiful [cami](https://twitter.com/opheIias), who is just as much of a lesbian!rey stan as i am.
> 
> based in the canonverse, but with some au tweaks - jessika and a few of the resistance pilots are smugglers, responsible for  
> smuggling spice and weapons across the galaxy. ben solo was never a villain bc ugh, he's rejected becoming a jedi but he still has the force. luke, leia and han are still alive.
> 
> contains: canon-typical themes (violence, battles, etc.); mentions of poe/finn, past poe/jess, platonic rey&ben. drug use w/ side effects; general focus on underworld + criminality. grey!jedi discourse. an attempt at smut; struggles with sexuality, internalised homophobia. more to come with updates.

 

 

**i.**

 

 

The first time Rey learns anything about Jessika Pava, her eyes are wide and curious and her palms are so sweaty, she has to wipe them on her thighs. They've just intercepted a First Order weapons shipment from Nar Shaddaa—kriffing _Nar Shaddaa_ , of all places—and Rey is high on it. Her blood is buzzing and it's great, alright? It's great.

And Finn is staring at her, utterly bewildered.

"Sorry," she blurts out.

"You look extremely happy for someone who just pissed off the entire Hutt Cartel," Finn says. "Anyway, we didn't even get half of it—"

They're lying low at the moment, the Resistance; ever since word got out across the galaxy that Hux was working to rebuild his beloved planet destroyer, anyone who was anyone has sunk below ground. Rey hasn't—things are off with her at the minute. Not off as in, she's imbalanced and conflicted and she'll be back to normal in a few days; it's off as in, she was meditating one day and saw Anakin Skywalker ignite his lightsaber in a room full of young Jedi and something in her bones went  _oh._

"We got enough," Rey says. "Enough to work out where it's all coming from."

Finn peers at her. "We know where it's all coming from. Tobb recognised that emblem, it's blatant Huttese—"

"No, not that," she interrupts, drifting closer to the pile like a moth, like a butterfly. It is just a heap of metal and Blaster bolts and harpoons but something is emanating from it, she can feel it in the Force. A story, a message. A breathy, baritone laugh Rey has only heard in her dreams. "I mean, who's smuggling it out."

"I don't see why that matters." Finn has his arms folded across his chest, he looks ambivalent. There is a bruise on his neck which Rey makes mental note to tease him about later. "Someone in the Order must have a rebellious streak."

The laugh morphs into something else; something light, something feminine. Rey touches the nozzle of a ballista gun and sees it, in just a millisecond: dark eyes, hairpin lips. A smirk that says,  _I know how the world is going to end._

Finn has known Rey long enough. He sighs and says, "Promise me you won't get carried away."

"I won't," she promises, instead of  _I already have_ , instead of,  _I dreamt about her last night._

He nods and she leans in. The vision returns in short bursts: bright, impulsive, like a star exploding. That's how Jessika works, isn't it?—in sudden, blinding explosions. Of course that's how she'd appear. 

 

-

 

Jessika knows exactly when she first heard about Rey, too. Somewhere between the Incident with the Rabid Bantha and the time she had to pull Nien Nunb out of a cantina in the Row because somebody had gotten drunk and accidentally set it on fire. She still has the scar on her ankle—they tripped over a droid on the way out.

She was sat in Fel Swoop with Nien, two cups of Corellian whiskey between them. He had that glint in his big black eyes that makes Jess wonder just how much they've seen.

"You know," he said, "they'll figure out who you are eventually."

She smirked at him. "They've taken their time so far."

Nien blinked. Jess had earned her arrogance but it never fell over into being sloppy, into losing control. "Of course they have. The last thing Hux needs is to be seen wiping out every smuggler in this galaxy."

"We're already underground," Jess shrugged; the whole reason she had come to Corellia and the grimy streets of the Blue Sector was to disappear. She had hightailed it out of Dandoran ten months ago; she thinks, nobody would ever come looking for her here.

Nien coughed, took a sip of his drink. "I hope they're paying you well for it."

"Enough," she said.

He raised an eyebrow. "What counts as enough?"

She looked at the table and ran her finger down the cracks in the wood. Enough to fuel her swoop bike, enough to buy hoi-broth from Bovo's in the evening. Enough to keep her in the crappy little flophouse she'd been holed up in, damp growing in the corners like moss.

Nien sighed, and clinked his glass with hers. "I've been meaning to tell you about something, anyway."

"Oh yeah?"

There was a pause before Nien leaned forward slightly, lowered his voice. "I heard on the thorn-vine that they've got a Jedi."

 _Jedi._ It sounded familiar—the Jedi had lay dormant for decades but the way Nien said it, it sounded just as real, as vivid and brightly lit as anything in the world.

A glass shattered somewhere, on another table. "A Guardian?"

"More than a Guardian." She didn't know the Force but she felt it, sometimes, when she walked past one of their temples. There were kyber crystals hidden somewhere behind the walls and Jess could hear them, her name in the frequencies, close enough to touch then gone again. "They're saying—"

"Who's  _they_?"

"People who have gotten closer to the Resistance than we ever have," he said, pointedly. Jess looked down again. The table was very interesting. "They're saying that Solo's boy rejected it but this girl—"

"It's a girl?"

Nien nodded. "It's a girl. She's strong, apparently. She's the reason Hux is Supreme Leader now."

(Jessika thinks, this was the moment it all began. Here, in this filthy cantina in Corellia. 

Rey was a new thing. Rey was a shiny new toy.

Jess was—

—interested.

She was very interested.)

 

Her chair squeaked when she got up to leave.

"You never said," Jess said, with a thought. "Does this new Jedi girl have a name?"

Nien's eyes narrowed as if trying to figure out an artwork; he asked, "So you can keep an eye out for her, right?" Jess realised, he's smarter than he looks.

"Yeah, exactly."

"Right." His black eyes shined with the reflections of candlelight. "It's Rey. So I've heard."

"Rey," she echoed.

Nien had this look on his face. "I know you like a challenge, Jess," he said, "but maybe stay away from this one."

 

-

There's a junkyard in the Blue Sector of Coronet City which residents call the Pit; it's eight feet high and rotting in the sun and famous for its "organic drop-offs" more than any actual waste that piles up. Not that any drop-offs are being made these days—the streets have been teeming with stormtroopers ever since Hux got wind of his weapon shipments being hijacked and redirected. A wave swept over Smuggler's Moon, cool and unstoppable. Faces Jessika recognised, as dull as they were, began to frequent less and less.

 

Karé meets her there. It's summer-cycle, the sun is up; the smell would be unbearable if she wasn't used to it.

Jess is getting sunburnt.

"You know," Karé says, pointing to the tip of her nose with a finger. "You can buy stuff for that at the Medcenter."

She scrunches her face; her freckles have come out, dusted across her face like constellations. "It doesn't hurt."

"It won't do your skin any good." Karé is—Karé. There's a warmth to her lacking in most smugglers, her smile actually reaches her eyes. Jess doesn't know whether Karé's family is in on her hobby, but she hopes they aren't. It's an ugly business, not made for people to find out about, especially when it's too late. "You'll get all sorts of ugly spots and marks. You're a pretty face, Pava, no need to ruin it for a tan—"

"A tan is the least of my concerns," she says, dryly. 

Karé blinks. "And your main concern is—?"

"Well, at this very moment, it's where you got that blouse from, because it's  _beautiful_." It's not, but you know, flattery goes a long way. "But in the long run, it's why I'm stood out in a landfill site when I could be at home, drinking noale and reading the last few chapters of  _Of Droids and Men_."

There's a moment, a pause. "I have a job for you. If you want it."

Jess smiles. "I'm all ears."

 

Karé reaches into her coat, brings out a postcard. It's an interchangeable scene: jungle, maybe Kashyyyk or Rodia. "There's a ship coming in to D'Qar mid-day cycle tomorrow, from Coruscant. It's a CR90 Corvette, nothing fancy, easy to reroute."

"There must be something special about it," Jess says, turning the card over. There's a serial number written on the back, along with coordinates and  _burn this_ in tiny letters.

She nods at her, mouth a knowing curve. "It's Resistance cargo."

"Ooh, Resistance." She really shouldn't be excited; the war between the Order and the Resistance has dragged on for as long as Jessika can remember, and she had made a promise to herself years ago that she would do nothing to engage in it but then Nien approached her with a bag of credits and a  _you'll never guess what, Jess._ "This is new."

"Mmhmm," says Karé, folding her arms.

"Let me guess." There is intrigue in her eyes, dancing like starlight. "This is an Order job. Is Hux finally stooping to our level because if so, I've got to admit, I'd be disappointed."

Karé shrugs, feigns ignorance.

Jess almost scowls. "Fair enough." Then, "How much?"

There's an abundance of lines on Karé's face; there are wrinkles and bags beneath her eyes, the pink curve of a scar beneath her lower lip. Jess' face lacks anything like that right now—bruises heal, cuts close up—but every day on Corellia threatens trouble. A bar fight, a street scrap. A trooper's Blaster bolt skimming past, the heat singeing her eyelashes. 

"A hundred crystals."

"A hundred?" Jess echoes, before tutting. "Nien would offer me double that."

Karé rolls her eyes, gives her an unimpressed look. "A hundred and five. Twenty if you go completely undetected."

Jess laughs—more like cackles, really, mischevious and deep. The unnerve which flashes across Karé's face is small but harsh. "One hundred and twenty? I don't know who's controlling your purse strings, Karé, but they are tighter than a botfly's arse." Then, with an afterthought, "I heard they have a Jedi in their ranks, now."

It seems to be a dirty word, around these parts. Perhaps it reminds Corellians of Snoke, of when Darth Caedus rolled in with his AT-ATs in a distant nightmare. "It's just a rumour."

"It's ruffled _your_ feathers." She smirks. "I reckon just the risk deserves another good, what— fifty?"

"You think I can magic up fifty more crystals out of thin air?"

When Jess tilts her head, the sun catches on her cheek, gets into her eyes. "You can spend them on my funeral when she chops me up like bantha meat with her lightsaber."

 

For the longest time, she thinks Karé is going to tell her to kriff off and skulk back to whatever cantina she's been living in for the past week. She wouldn't be wrong. But then she nods, the curtest of movements, and they shake hands for about a second before a trooper turns the corner and says,  _alright ladies, move it on._

 

-

 

She gets home and finds her datapad.

Well,  _home_. Room thirty-four in the flophouse in the Row. It's small and smells funny but hey, a bed will always be better than the floor. 

 

You can find anything on the HoloNet if you know where to look. Smugglers have been using it since its creation, finding hidden sites and encrypted passages and relaying messages across the galaxy, feeling them ricochet off of ships and satellites. 

Jess taps in the serial number on the postcard, then holds it over a candle and watches fire eat it away until it is nothing.

The image of a ship comes up, grainy and blue. 

It's—unimpressive. The Resistance has never been as flashy as their opponents but still, she'd expect at least a splash of colour.

 

The information that pops up tells her that the ship is docked in Coruscant's spaceport and is programmed to take flight at quarter-day-cycle, droid-piloted and at a swift speed for a flimsy Corvette. It's an easy enough job—reprogram the droid's diagnostics, cruise the ship into the Artisan Arrivals court (the name still makes her roll her eyes) and smuggle out the weapons through the supply tunnel underneath. 

Nothing she can't do on her own.

It sometimes upsets her, just a little bit. There were days when she was little where she used to sit cross-legged on the grass and look up, up up  _up_ at the stars. Little streaks of white sometimes appeared against the darkness, tears in the night sky.

 _They're passing ships,_ her mother would say as one tore itself into hyperspace.  _They cross entire lightyears in just a few seconds_ _._

(When Jessika was seventeen, she went to a tiny tattoo parlour in the Row and asked them to give her wings.  _It's not an impulsive thing_ , she told the Twi'lek at the desk.  _It's not my teenage rebellion or anything like that._

Later that night, her sister stared at the feathers on her back and said,  _what the kriff, Jess._

She shrugged.  _I think it's quite fitting_ , she said,  _seeing as I want to fly_.)

 

She makes a mug of caf and starts browsing: the members of the Resistance, its bloody history, the names of each fleet and squadron and commander. Her eyes flicker over Poe Dameron's name and it makes her heart hurt, just a little. She tries not to dwell on the past—it's not like she can change it, it's not like she wants to—but there are nights when she drinks a little too much and wonders what could have been, you know?

Alternate universes where she took him up on his offer.

(Alternate universes where she got things right.)

The light in her room is nice at this time of day; when the sun is thinking about setting but hasn't quite made up its mind either way just yet. She curls up on her bed and sips. The steam makes her face go all blotchy.

She thinks—well. The Resistance with a Jedi, that's going to be different. The stakes will be higher than last time. She's heard stories about the Force but doesn't know it the way the Guardians do, wearing kyber around their necks like lucky charms. Apparently it lives in everything, runs through atoms like water. 

It's an unsettling thought, that some people can just tap into it. All that power. It makes Jess shiver.

She sighs and delves into the HoloNet again. The datapad is old, the screen is cracked. The name rattles around the back of her mind like a loose bolt:  _Rey._ Just—Rey. When she types it in, a face pops up, fragmented by the glass: pretty, dark hair. Eyes like the actresses from classic holofilms Jess used to watch with her sister.

 

"So," Jess murmurs to the screen.  "You're the one who's about to make my life difficult."

The image fizzes as the signal drops, suddenly. Rey's face divides then comes back together, a little hazy, but her eyes stay sharp. Feline. 

She switches the datapad off and sets it aside.  _Yep_ , she thinks. _It's going to be you._

 

-

 

From across the galaxy, Rey hears somebody say her name.

It's a distant echo, perhaps a memory. She can't tell. It plays in her mind like an old folksong, like a faded message whirring around a satellite for all eternity. 

She looks around; she is in the Falcon, hurtling through hyperspace. The world around her is whirling blue. If she peers hard enough, she sees the eyes of millions looking back from lightyears away. Force-sensitives, the old Jedi, the old Sith. A library of faces who have shaped her to what she is now.

 

 _It's going to be you_ , somebody says.

Rey turns over in bed. Her mind wanders to that weapons shipment they're expecting tomorrow.

When she finally sleeps, she dreams of pilots, of X-Wings tearing through asteroids and, strangely, a woman with wings on her back.

 

-

 

She wakes up and they are out of hyperspace, docked back on D'Qar. The First Order blew their old base up but the villagers, having aligned themselves long ago with the Resistance, helped to rebuild the landing bays and the living quarters and even built a cantina, one which sold nerfburgers and jogan fruit tart and, Rey's favourite, jifcake. It's nice; it's nice because D'Qar is nice, the colour the sky goes when the sun disappears behind the hills is nice. Rey has never really felt at home anywhere, but she thinks D'Qar is probably the closest she'll ever come.

 

Poe is in a storeroom, rearranging boxes. He smiles at her when she walks in.

"Morning," he beams; his curls, usually immaculate, fall loosely into his eyes. His lips look kiss-bitten.  _Ah_ , she smirks.  _That's what happened to Finn's neck._

"The shipment is due in a few hours," Rey says. Her stomach feels all knotted, twisted up—why, she isn't quite sure.

Poe raises an eyebrow. "Good to know everything is still smooth sailing."

"Mmh," she mumbles, looks at the floor.

"Hey," he says. Her eyes dart up to meet his: big, brown, caring. Pools of honey you could drown in if you looked too long. No wonder Finn fell so hard, so fast. "Are you okay? You look a little off. Where's that smile I look forward to seeing every day?"

Rey sighs, but smiles nonetheless—it's the Poe Effect. "Yeah, I just—Force things."

He chuckles. "Force things. I'd be out of my depth, then."

"Probably not," she counters, then, "I've got this feeling in my stomach, like something is telling me— I don't know. It might just be me, but if there's one thing Luke always says, it's to follow my gut." Something tight in her chest eases up as a penny drops. "I think we should check on the Corvette. Just to see where it is, what it's doing."

And luckily, Poe is amazing. He doesn't think she's weird, he doesn't question her. He simply nods and says, "On it, my dear."

 

- 

 

The Corvette is on Corellia. It's docked in the Artisan Arrivals court, landing bay eight, the droid piloting it dead-eyed and powerless. Jess has been up all morning reprogramming it from her datapad, from her awful motel room. Honestly, technology is incredible.

 

-

 

They are stood in the command centre, around the holo-base. Leia and Luke, regal-looking; a few commanders, stone-faced. Rey is behind Finn, holding onto his arm like he's an anchor and she might float away.

Poe speaks up. "Do we at least know where it is?"

Leia clears her throat. "We've tracked the ship to Corellia. Of course, there is no guarantee—and very little chance—the cargo is there with it."

Rey feels—guilty. She feels like she could have stopped this a long time ago.

"It's not the end of the world," Luke considers. "It wasn't a big shipment. Not even a third of our usual order."

Leia sighs. She is pragmatic in every way but, very understandably, she is sick of being caught up in wars. "That's not the point. Somebody knew that ship had weapons in it, they knew how to disable the droid and manipulate the nav system."

Han is there; whenever they discuss smuggling, he is dragged in like some expert witness. His hair has gone grey and his frown lines have deepened, but Rey has seen old holopics of when he was a young scoundrel, playing with Leia's heart and yeah, he still looks like a Solo. "That's easy enough to do," he pipes up, voice gritty. "If you can figure your way through the HoloNet, you're into any ship within fifteen minutes, you can steer it wherever the kriff you want."

"Why Corellia?" Finn asks. He hasn't seen much of the galaxy, he spent too much time bowing to Hux's fist. "What's there?"

"A criminal network like nothing you've ever seen," Leia remarks, flatly. 

Han adds, "With a million different trade routes to escape through."

"Oh," Finn blinks. "Great."

A soft exhale. "Well, at least we know that we're on someone's radar," Luke says, always the reasonable one. "We know that we need to keep a closer eye on the ships from now on. Poe, can you work on amping up the defences, making sure the trackers can't be disabled so easily?"

He nods. "Sure thing."

"Okay," says Leia, eyes drifting from face to face. "Okay. The next shipment is due—" She taps a few buttons on the holo-base, brings up a blue image of the Corvette, suspended in the air. "—in four week-cycles. We can more than manage until then if we stay out of trouble. Until that day comes, everybody stay alert and report any suspicious HoloNet activity, even if it's just a bit of static where there shouldn't be."

Ben is looking at Rey, from the corner. They've both been very quiet all meeting; their sensitivity means they exist on the same wavelength, she can tug the threads of the Force and feel him pull in reply. 

She sends him a look that says,  _I'll tell you later._

He nods, very slightly, and returns his gaze to the centre.

 

-

 

Ben joined the Resistance properly like, two or three years ago. There was some weird drama with him and Han and Leia, and possibly Darth Vader? Nobody told Rey much about it, and eavesdropping never worked because Ben is also Force-sensitive and he could sense always her lingering behind the door. It didn't matter in the end; he joined, and his mother looked at him with wide, proud eyes and said,  _welcome home._

Rey and Ben have a lot in common, she thinks. Conflicted, both space wizards. Thrust into a world neither of them knew how to navigate. Rey watches out for Ben like he's her soulmate, but like, a soulmate she  _chose_ : in turn, Ben sometimes catches Rey looking at him like he hung the moon. 

Skywalkers are weird, is what Rey figured out pretty quickly. There's a weird unspoken law around loyalty. Rey was glad she didn't have to conform to that too much, because one time she was training with Ben and she gave him a nasty scar and felt bad about it, but not like,  _Skywalker_ bad. Skywalkers live and die by their bloodline, apparently. That scared Rey, just a little. She wasn't used to commitment. 

 

Ben's alright, anyway. Rey struggled to figure him out when they picked Ben up from Coruscant, having heard on the HoloNet that Han Solo's son was wreaking havoc in the sunset cantina; he was a bit of a disaster. He bared a hatred for his parents that she couldn't understand. She had grown up without a family—she didn't understand how you could love someone but not  _like_ them. He was young and cut-up and had longish black hair, black eyes. 

She liked that somebody was there who knew what it was like. She'd tried, but she was too imbalanced. And Ben was a solid core she could hold onto, at least when things got bad.

And she'd worry about him if anything happened.

Mostly because he'd have  _definitely_ got himself caught up with a gang or a cartel or something equally as stupid, but it's alright, he's not going anywhere. Even if Rey has to throttle General Hux herself.

 

-

 

It's a beautiful day on D'Qar. Hot and dry, pollen in the air and the sun beaming down on Rey's shoulders and Finn's dark hair.

They get lunch in the cantina and sit together; "Rey, do you want caf?" and of course she does. She drinks about three mugs in the space of ten minutes and Finn has to stop her from going for a fourth.

"Woah there," he says, with a chuckle underlined with concern. "Bad night?"

She sighs, puts the cup down. "This thing with the ship is bugging me."

Finn leans forward, listens. He's always been a good listener. "It was bound to happen at some point," he says. "There's been more smuggling activity all over the galaxy, especially now the Order's collecting resources."

"I know, I know." It's playing on repeat in Rey's mind:  _the ship is on Corellia. The cargo is gone._ "I just didn't think it would actually happen to  _us._ "

"Smugglers aren't picky," Finn offers. "Han said that, they take the highest price."

But she's not satisfied. The Force is just there, lingering in the corners of her vision, shimmering like stardust;  _there's something more,_ it tells her,  _you know there is_. "It just—it doesn't feel right. None of it does."

Finn looks down at his bowl and scrunches his nose. "Well then," he says.  

 

"I want to go to Corellia," she says, out of nowhere.

Finn rears back in his seat with the same energy as that time on the Falcon, when she'd asked to go back to Jakku and he'd nearly thrown the spacer's tape at her head. "Rey, you know how much I love you, but you've had better ideas."

She smirks and flicks a pea at him. "I'll save you a seat on the X-Wing."

 

-

 

It's common knowledge amongst the criminal world that if you're going to meet with someone, you do it in public. You place something mundane between you—a book, a flask of yarba tea—and try not to raise your voices. Jess has known this since forever; she's sitting in Mynock's with a bottle of fruit fizz, turning the final pages of  _Of Droids and Men_ when Karé finally shows up.

She looks at the book and says, "The BLX droid kills the other one at the end."

Jess glares up at her. "I was just about to read that."

Karé smirks when she sits down, reaches for the menu. "I just read it for you." Then, voice quieter, "I trust it's done."

"It is," Jess replies, sounding as nonchalant as she can. There's an art to the balance of it. 

"Everything went smoothly?"

"As ever."

"And the cargo is where?"

"Where it always is." There's a cave carved into the wall of the supply tunnel that runs beneath the spaceport; smugglers usually store everything there and cover the entrance with the old, faded Rebellion recruitment poster that's still there. It needs replacing, actually—it's started to rip. 

Karé orders a caf from a passing worker droid. "Good," she says. "You can expect payment within the next three days."

 _Three days_ ; it makes Jessika's teeth itch, just how long she has to wait. They decided on two hundred crystals in the end. That's enough for rent on an apartment, enough for a new coat and some bacta gel pads and maybe some extra adjustments to her swoop bike, if it stretches that far. She can get them cheap from the right salesmen.

 

"Hey," Jess says, catching Karé by the sleeve of her white jacket. Well, she says white: nothing stays truly pure in Corellia. "Come to me first when you catch wind of a new shipment, okay? Not everybody would have been able to reprogram a Resistance droid so smoothly."

"Hmm," Karé says. Names swirl around her head like a lottery.

"That's not an answer," Jess says.

Karé shrugs. "It's noted."

Jess smirks, unimpressed as she returns to her book. "You're too kind." Karé's mouth does that petulant toddler-thing and she heads off, leaving three credits on the table as a tip. Even criminals have manners, you see.

 

She heads back to the Blue Sector on her swoop bike, makes a detour via the spaceport; even in such a built-up city, the sun manages to shine through the gaps and dowse everything in gold. 

The Corvette is still there, an empty husk. She's not an amateur; she wiped away all the prints and left everything in its rightful place. 

There's an unfamiliar ship in the bay next to it. Jessika has operated here long enough to learn the general patterns of arrival, the to and fro of different organisations pulling into the planet for whatever reasons. It's a G9 Rigger-class light freighter, dark grey and orange—pretty common for basic transport of cargo but Jess has never seen this one before, with its bent outrigger and missing middle cannon and the long skim in the paint down the left side, a TIE blast that got too close.

Everything is concrete in this area of the planet—no green, nothing that doesn't smell like hypermatter and engine stress. Jess has fuel smeared over her hands, down her trousers. She pulls her bike to a stop outside of a seedy-looking tavern, and watches.

 

-

 

Rey hasn't been to Corellia for—well,  _ever_. 

It's hot and dark and dimly-lit, the skyscrapers casting those on the ground into permanent shadow. She misses the fresh air of D'Qar, the long drags of openness of Jakku, as soon as she steps off of the ship. It hits her like a punch to the chest: the smog, the smell of it.

Finn is there, too, wrinkling his nose. "This looks like where ships come to die."

"It's where they come to be raided," she counters. She has to squint to block out the sun in certain parts, divert her eyes to the shade so she can figure out the signs and the various shops. Lots of mechanics for hire, lots of spare-part market stalls. A tavern in the corner, raucous laughter pouring out of open windows.

Finn nudges her shoulder. "You should probably hide your saber," he says. "Someone will cut your hand off to get that."

Smart lad. She obliges, plucking it from her waist and stashing it in her satchel. It protests at its misuse, shuddering softly in her hands;  _sorry,_ she tells it as the lid buckles shut. 

"Right," he continues. "Where to, Madame Jedi?"

Rey glares pointedly at him—it's a Poe phrase, that—and cocks her head over at the Corvette sat in a spotlight of yellow, almost diamante in its stillness. She revs the Force in her veins for backup, and searches for that feeling in her chest, the one she has to hunt for and push down on and then  _woah_ , it's all there. What that  _it_ is, she doesn't really know. But—it's something.

 

When she touches the handle of the Corvette's escape pod, a feeling manifests behind her.

It moulds her like clay. The Force whispers,  _follow me_ , so she does: she turns, leans into that magnetic pull that she felt all those months ago in Maz Kanata's castle, heart pounding and wild-eyed.

 

Jessika is—holding her breath. For some reason.

She finds some binoculars and holds them to her face. The world triples in size and so does she: that girl, the one with the dark hair and the pretty eyes and the white robes, white like the snows on Hoth or a kyber crystal before it's been cracked and corrupted. White like the way sun glints off the metal hull of a freighter, like the stars above Dandoran when the clouds parted on a clear night and she could look out of her window and imagine just what was out there, waiting. 

Waiting for her.

The Jedi girl is looking over her way—eyes darting around, looking for _something_. Jess doesn't quite know why her heart is beating so fast but it is, hummingbird wings behind her ribcage, one long note.

 

Rey's brow twitches; warm, getting warmer.

The dust and the ash are thick on Corellia. The ship engines churn out fumes but even through it all, through the black and the shit and the clouds, the Force lets her see everything in vivid technicolour. It nudges her again,  _left a bit, right a bit, nearly there, it's worth it, I promise_ —

 

Through the lens, the girl's face is so close to Jess', they could be kissing.

She feels breath, sickly sweet on her cheek. 

And suddenly— they are looking at each other. Directly. Through the crowds of people, over the commotion. The Jedi girl is looking at her, two big brown diamonds and Jess is falling falling  _falling_ into a void that opens up right there, under her feet on a shitty Corellian pavement. 

 

Realistically it is probably only a second. But it feels like an eternity to Rey. It feels like time stops, just for a moment: like it slows down and grinds to a halt and everything falls at the wayside of the woman on the swoop bike, the one who is lowering the binoculars and looking at Rey like she's an angel, like she's not real.

Everything is quiet. It's just them, and their breathing, and the Force rushing through Rey's veins like a dam has burst.

And then the recognition comes, like a punch in the chest. The freckles, the red bandana around her forehead, the cat-like bow of her lips.  _Oh,_ Rey thinks.  _There you are. I've been dreaming about you._

 

-

 

Finn grabs her arm. "Rey," he says, "come on, we can't hang around. People are already looking at us funny."

She looks at him and then back again; the swoop bike has gone, a dust trail in its wake. A bubble bursts and noise rushes back into her ears and suddenly she is human again, she feels corporeal. Her feet can feel the floor beneath them.

"Yeah," she says. Another quick look back, just to make sure. "Yeah. Sorry. Just—dust in my eye."

 

-

 

Jess speeds away as if Darth Vader himself is snapping at her heels with that lightsaber.

The Blue Sector is as congested and grimy as ever. But the sun is sinking and when Jess tips her head back she can just make out the belt of Orion, the length of his arrow firing into the heavens. They look a bit different now—they look brighter. 

She gets back to the flophouse and dives into bed, pulls the sheets over her head and breathes. The fabric is stiff but it's cool on her face and it lets her focus her mind: come on, Jess, you're a professional.

 

Her datapad needs charging. Jess is up the whole night searching for Rey, who Rey is, _what_ Rey is. The records are sparse but she manages to piece some things together:

Her parents are unknown.

She grew up on Niima Outpost, on Jakku. 

She's a scavenger.

She's personally credited by the Resistance for finding Han Solo's son.

She killed Supreme Leader Snoke with her lightsaber, in his own throne room.

She's a Jedi, trained personally by Luke Skywalker.

The screen goes blank as the power drains: it becomes just a sheet of glass, in Jess' hand. She's never really felt incomplete, ever, in her life; maybe on sad nights when she's had one too many Corellian whiskeys. She's never really wanted for anything _hard_ , wanted to know anything so much she'd tear the universe apart for it. 

 

It feels nice to have something to work towards, now.

It feels nice to have a project.

Jess swallows; her mouth tastes like fruit fizz and engine fumes and, overwhelmingly,  _want._  

 

-

 

The flight back to D'Qar makes Rey's head hurt. She blames the whir of hyperspace around them, blames it on the onset of hyper-rapture from looking out the window for too long. Finn is piloting as he likes these little freighters better: the dashboard isn't as complicated, the guns easier to manipulate. He's been wanting to improve his flying skills ever since he came crashing down with Poe onto Jakku, right into Rey's arms.

 

"You and Ben," Finn says, thoughtful, "at first I thought you hated each other. Even when you were working together." Nobody's been talking about the new saber Ben's wielding nowadays—it made Leia smile, because she's been hoping he'd ditch the crossguard monstrosity since day one—but it looks good on him, Rey thinks.

 _Happiness_ looks good on him.

It looks good on all of them; they should have all picked it up a long time ago.

After Snoke, the Resistance went through a little downtime. Rey was lost in the galaxy for a while, planet-hopping her way back to the Falcon. Now they are something resembling home, which is always better when it is people rather than a place. 

 

Finn looks over at Rey next to him, tilts his head to the side like a question. 

Rey has her chin propped up on her hand, staring wistfully into hyperspace, the Force trying to make sense of whatever it was that happened on that kriffing spaceport. She blinks, raises one free shoulder then drops it:  _long story._

He settles his gaze. "I'm sorry things didn't work about between you two," he says, with a sympathy to his voice that feels so genuine. "It's a shame. I thought—Poe  _really_ thought—you two were a pretty good match."

She doesn't think about Ben as much nowadays, but there isn't much regret there. In the scheme of things, it's not like they got very far; it was fleeting, it was a mess, neither of them really knew what they were doing. But it's long gone now, water under the bridge, and that's nobody's fault, just a casualty of youth. They had both been so young.

Rey shrugs again, both shoulders this time as she sits upright in the co-pilot's chair. "We were just kids," she says. "We work better as friends."

 

He presses a button on the dash which makes it all light up. Hues of red and green and blue fill the cockpit, a neon light show. It's a welcome distraction, you see: the thing with Finn is, he's always been able to tell when Rey is lying. 

(What happened with Ben really is—it's a long story.

Long story short, though, it involved Rey going to a midsummer festival on the forest moon of Endor with Ben (it was Leia's idea, you see, a bonding experience). She was seventeen and her hair was in three buns and there was this girl there, one of the few other humans in the village. She had bright red hair and green eyes and Rey took one look at her and thought,  _kriff_.)

 

"You can tell me, you know," Finn says, low, sweet. "You can tell me anything."

There are a lot of things Rey could say here, now: so many things she kind of wants to, now that Snoke is dead and Hux is defenceless for the time being. Things were calm for long enough for Rey to start to try and process everything that's happened in the past few years, her uprooting from the sand.

But—that was before.

When Rey closes her eyes, the imprint of hyperspace lingers on the back of her eyelids. And—a face.  _Her_ face. Painted by the Force in ghostly shapes. 

She says, "I know I can," and leaves it at that.

 

It is nighttime when they make planetfall, the moon is up. The trees are dark as they pick their way through; Finn knows a shortcut from the landing bay to the living quarters so they take it and end up at the entrance to the bunkers, bathed in silver light.

Finn wraps his arms around her and hugs.  

"Night,  _pateesa_ ," he says, with a smile. She sighs into his shoulder and hugs back, nice and tight. "See you in the morning."

"Goodnight," Rey says, and she already knows what she's going to dream about because it's the same dream she's been having for days: a sharp jawline, a freckled nose. "Don't let the blister fleas bite."

 

-

 

The accommodations are cramped but not the worst Rey has ever stayed in. It's a Y-shaped corridor which splits off into two rooms, men and women. Ben is there: his hair is pulled back in a three-strand braid and wow, this is probably the first time she's seen him not wearing black.

"Oh," she says, "evening."

"Evening." It takes her a second to recognise the brown dressing gown he's wearing as Han's. Bless. "You've had a weird day."

Rey frowns; sometimes, she forgets just how connected they are, the two of them. They're the only Force-sensitives for miles but it's more than that: those awkward few months of trying desperately to love each other has bonded them in more ways than one. It's not one of those full-on Force bonds she's read about, but—it's weird. Sometimes when she closes her eyes and concentrates, she can feel him there, just—nearby.

He sees the look on her face and says, "Sorry. I just, there was a moment earlier—" He goes red. "Sorry. Ignore me."

She hates this: the skirting around, the stunted sentences. She hopes a day will come when they can just talk to each other. 

"No, go on." 

Ben blinks. "I felt something earlier, in the Force. It felt like it came from you."

Rey turns her body towards him, poised. "Okay."

"Like a shockwave," he continues. "It made my teeth rattle."

"Ooh," she says, scrunching her nose. "That bad?"

Ben nods, lips a soft, understanding line. Rey can feel his headache, a slow pulsating point behind her own forehead. "I'm guessing something happened on Corellia."

"Er—" she begins, "I don't think so. Nothing _happened_ -happened." Her hands make some big, worldly gesture.

His eyebrows shoot up in disbelief;  _really?_ And it breaks her facade down like she's made of wet paper. "Okay, I— you genuinely wouldn't believe me if I told you. I don't understand it myself."

He asks, "Do you want to talk about it?"

And she cocks her head in thought, eyes narrow and careful. "Not yet," she says.

There was a time he'd have been offended at that, at being refused. But that was then, and this is now: they've both grown and matured, and the corner of Ben's lips quirk up as he nods, before he disappears into the men's bunks in his dad's dressing gown, looking like Chewbacca if he had shrunk in the wash.

 

Everybody is asleep in the women's bunk. 

Rey sits on the edge of her bed, kicks her feet back and forth like a lazy swimmer. It's dark, someone is snoring. The Force is lingering around her, on her shoulders and in her joints like, oil or something—that stuff that explodes under pressure. 

The intrigue has been gnawing at her all day.

It's sitting low in her chest somewhere. This new-found knowledge, sunlight seeping through cracks in a wall for this— _person_.

Some random, nameless person she looked at for point-five seconds.

She closes her eyes and delves into an abyss. The Force is big and all-encompassing and when it swallows her whole Rey feels weightless, out-of-body: she is space-walking through her memories, watching them fly by in flickers of colour and motion until she finds the grey of the spaceport and tastes the ash in the air. (It's a new skill, her new technique to perfect. She thinks, if she goes back far enough, she might find out where she came from,  _who_ those two people were on the starship that disappeared into the atmosphere above Jakku as Unkar Plutt held her tiny little arm and anchored her to the floor.) 

 _Where to, Madame Jedi?_ Finn's voice sounds discombobulated. Rey concentrates, fast-forwards and—

 

-

 

It's late morning-cycle on Corellia. Jess feels the hairs on the back of her neck bristle.

Nien is opposite her. They're in Fel Swoop again; this place actually does pretty decent breakfasts. He sees her twitch, his brow furrows. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I just—" Jess says, looking over her shoulder. "I feel like I'm being watched."

The Sullustan glances around, quick and discreet. There's barely anybody else in at this time, the bartender is asleep on the ebla beer pumps. 

Jess shrugs. "I dunno," she says, "maybe it's just me."

 

-

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so i know nothing much has happened yet, this chapter is basically all set-up oops (it gets gay i promise)
> 
> [Jessika Pava](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jessika_Pava)  
> [Nar Shaddaa](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Nar_Shaddaa/Legends), a moon famous for criminal activities  
> [Hutts](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Hutt/Legends) and the [Hutt Cartel](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Hutt_Cartel)  
> [Fel Swoop](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Fel_Swoop) and [The Pit](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/The_Pit_\(Corellia\)) in the [Blue Sector](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Blue_Sector) of [Coronet City](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Coronet_City/Legends) ([Corellia](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Corellia/Legends))  
> [Nien Nunb](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Nien_Nunb)  
> [Dandoran](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Dandoran)  
> [Swoop](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Swoop/Legends)  
> [Guardians of the Whills](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Guardians_of_the_Whills)  
> [Karé Kun](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Kar%C3%A9_Kun)  
> [ _Of Droids and Men_](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Of_Droids_and_Men)  
> [Corvette ships](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Corvette/Legends); [G9 Rigger-clas freighters](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/G9_Rigger-class_light_freighter/Legends)  
> [Nova crystals](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Nova_crystal/Legends), a form of currency  
> [Artisan Arrivals Court](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Artisan_Arrivals_Court) and the [tunnel underneath](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Supply_tunnel_26)  
> [HoloNet](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/HoloNet/Legends)  
> [Mynock's Haven](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mynock%27s_Haven)  
> [BLX labour droids](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/BLX_labor_droid)  
> [Hyper-rapture](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Hyper-rapture)  
> [ Midsummer festival ](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Midsummer_festival) on [Endor](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Endor/Legends)  
> [Blister fleas](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Blister_flea)  
>  _Pateesa_ is Huttese for "friend"  
> [Ebla beer](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ebla_beer)


	2. min larel

 

 

**ii.**

 

 

"You know," Rey says the next morning, "I think I know who stole our cargo."

They're all sat in the cantina, her and Poe and Finn and Ben, eating breakfast. Galactic grits, buttery like how she likes them. She says it and three pairs of eyes fly up, lock with hers.

"You what, now?" Finn says.

She looks down, back up, chews on her bottom lip. The Force feels like liquid gold in her arteries. "I think I've met her."

 

-

 

The first time Jessica got involved with smuggling, she was eighteen and used to all the people of Dandoran walking past her like she didn't exist. She had just finished school and was looking around for a job—on her busted-up swoop bike, because she hadn't yet learned to fight and she wanted to avoid more holes in her slacks, the kind that would mysteriously appear if she was dumb enough to walk home, because she had always been a dumb, scrappy kid.

The plus side was that there was an abandoned shipyard on the way home. She liked it, because the ships there always had stories—they had different-coloured wings and symbols painted on and characteristic damage. She always slowed down, leaned against the fence, craned her neck to see through the chain-link to whatever new beat-up ride had been dumped there this week.

Today it was a Dartiss-5 Caravel, a dirty white yacht with red stripes down the side. 

It was an impulse decision; she says she's not impulsive but she was, back then. Still is. It took a matter of moments to climb over the fence, boots landing on the dirt with a smack as she let gravity take over the work. Easy as pie. 

 

 _Come on, then,_ she whispered,  _let's take you for a ride._

She tried the door handle; unlocked. She was gangly and too thin back then, she could reach the furthest levers on the dash. 

It was—fast. Like, surprisingly fast. For a ship that was missing a front-left shield and creaked whenever it turned too sharply, she bolted down the road like a rabid nerf. The wind was in her hair and her heart was in her mouth and Jess realised, right then and there, that she wanted to do this for the rest of her life. 

 

She lasted twenty minutes on the road. It was her first strike; the shipyard owner found her.  _Never again,_ she told him, imagining her mum's face if she ever found out, the  _you're taking after your dad._  She stood very still and promised it was a very, very stupid mistake and she'd never say a word about the tightly-wrapped parcel of spice that was conspicuously stashed under the pilot's seat.

The next day, she spotted a HWK-290 light freighter behind the chain-link. The owner was there, he knew exactly who she was.

 _You wanna fly one of these, kid?_ he asked her. She nodded, there was engine grease all over his hands.  _Alright, then. On one condition._

 

("You were always getting in trouble over ships," Nien said, a few years later during a harvest festival in Kor Vella. "Save some love for the ladies, Jess."

Jessika pushed a piece of cheffa cake into his mouth to shut him up. "What can I say," she shrugged, "my first love will always be the stars.")

 

-

 

The grits go cold very quickly as they all stare at her. Finn's mouth opens and closes like a fish.

Poe says, "It's a her?"

"It's a her," Rey nods. The memory has become a part of her brain now: she doesn't need to hunt for it, she can call it to the forefront of her vision like she's watching it play out again, right in front of her eyes. Whether that's a good thing— "I think. No, I know. It's definitely a her."

Ben narrows his eyes. There's a suspicious curve to his mouth; Rey knows it well. 

"Look—" she begins. "I just— I— Finn, do you remember her?"

All the light shifts to him, and he nearly spits out his caf. Finn was never one for attention, until he, y'know, ran away from the First Order in a stolen TIE-fighter and brought the entire stormtrooper army on the lot of them. "Um."

"She had a bandana on her head, a red one. And she was on a swoop bike—you know, one of those Zephyr-G ones that look like they're about to fall apart at any second—by the tavern."

Finn shakes his head. "Sorry."

Rey sighs: maybe she did imagine her, after all. "Not at all?"  _No_ , he mouths. "Fair enough. She was looking at us really funny. Through binoculars. It was like she was expecting us, or she recognised us or— recognised  _me_ , at least."

"But you've never seen her before?" Poe asks.

Now it's been repeated back to her, Rey realises, it really does make no sense. But there's this feeling in her brain and in her heart and she can see her clear as day: the rust on the bike's handlebars, the dust stains on her trousers, the smudge of engine grease just below her left eye—

 _Wow_ , Ben's voice ripples through the Force.  _You're really in deep._

She scowls at him, and shoves a spoonful of grits in her mouth to stop herself from saying something she'll regret.

 

-

 

The first time Rey ever flew a ship, she was twelve. It was a battered old starhopper which Unkar Plutt was going to strip for parts. 

Three minutes in the air, her stomach churned and she crash-landed so hard she threw up.

It was kriffing awesome.

Afterwards, Mashra took one look at her and said,  _you're sky-touched, Rey,_ and Rey's smile was the size of the Denarii supernova. She thought,  _this is what I was made to do._

 

-

 

It's raining when Jess gets back to her room, pulling her bike into the parking lot with that familiar rumble; she's soaked and her eyes are tired and it's that humid summer heat down here so her sleeves are pulled up to the shoulder, hair tied back. She hates summer on Corellia. Its days are of a reasonable length and its year pretty standard but kriff, the humidity feels like a blanket pulled over her head, clutching around her chest.

The Twi'lek at the reception desk nods at her. "You've had a visitor."

Jess blinks, looking back and forth between him and the rack of mailboxes on the wall. "Okay," she says; something sparks inside her, quick and burning.  _Was it_ —? "Did they leave a name?"

He shakes his head. "She just left something in your letterbox. Out of here in a hurry, too."

"What did she look like?" She sounds eager, excited, in a way that she isn't, mostly, ever. 

A beat passes. The Twi'lek looks up, raises an eyebrow. "Tall, short blonde hair."

"Oh," Jess says. Her shoulders fall to a slant. 

"Not who you were expecting, huh?" He's smirking like she has something to hide. Jess pokes her tongue out at him. 

 

There's a brown parcel in her mailbox. It feels heavy, she can make out the outline of stones beneath the paper.

"Woah," the Twi'lek says. "What did you do, rob Mygeeto?"

Jess smiles to herself, small and quiet. "Something like that."

 

A parcel appears in her mailbox every day for the next four days, until it amounts to the two-hundred crystals she was promised. They sit in the centre of her shitty little room, this ridiculous pile of bright green, green like emerald wine or the swathes of forest she used to play in on Dandoran. It glows and heaves as if alive and Jess can see her future in its shine—a path out of the Blue Sector, even if it is just to a neighbouring town. A path to somewhere with less pollution and less death everywhere she looks, less grime clinging to everyone's eyes.

 

"You're seriously just going to up and leave me," Nien says. "I thought we were in this together."

He's kidding; his black eyes are curved with this toothy grin that unfurls across his face like ribbon. He's proud of her, it makes Jess' heart feel warm. "I'll still be in the area," she reasons, "so you can always pop in and visit."

"Oh, so you've decided where you're going," he infers.

Jess is up at the dresser, pouring two glasses of Corellian nectar. This is a custom for them—a weekly catch-up with something alcoholic. "Not yet," she says. "Just somewhere else on Corellia, somewhere nice. Maybe Bela Vistal? Up in the fresh air."

"Stars,  _please_ go there." Nien takes his glass, clinks it with hers:  _cheers_. "Then I have an excuse to go there all the time and escape this dump."

She looks at him, pointedly. "Come on, Nien," she says. "With all the jobs you run, you must have enough credits to buy Corellia and turn it into your own personal massage parlour."

He shakes his head. "I only take half the cut, and the hauls aren't worth much. They aren't Resistance guns, that's for sure."

"It's overhyped." She sits opposite him, on the floor. "To say they're such a big organisation, their ships sure are easy to hack. All it took was a bit of fiddling on the HoloNet and bam, I was in. They don't even have a firewall up. Amateurs."

"You're too modest."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means," he says, taking a sip, "most smugglers don't even know what the HoloNet is. Everybody I work with just hops in a ship and captures the shipment manually. You're the only one since—well, since Solo who knows what they're doing with the Net."

She frowns. "Solo? As in, Han Solo?"

Nien shoots her a look. "No, as in his bratty son."

"I'm flattered, Nien, really," Jess smirks, batting her eyelids comically. "They're both in the Resistance now, aren't they? I wonder what dad's thinking, watching someone steal his cargo with his own tactics. I'd never show my face again."

"I wonder what the Jedi girl's thinking."

It's a cool remark, subtle. He knows exactly what he's doing, but it doesn't stop Jess nearly choking on her drink.  _Kriff, Jess_ , she thinks,  _pull yourself together_.

"I'm sure she's got bigger things to worry about," she says. "With Hux trying to destroy the entire galaxy. Again."

Nien rolls his eyes, with so much vigour she's surprised they don't pop out of his skull. "Don't even get me started. My next job is for the Order, too."

Jess winces. "Fun."

And then his eyes sparkle—a sparkle which Jess knows far too well. 

"Uh oh," she says, sitting upright. Her nectar sloshes in its glass. "What awful idea have you had now—"

 

Nien puts his cup aside and leans in as if the walls can hear them; perhaps they can, she wouldn't put it past the dodgy owner of the flophouse, considering how much of a criminal he is himself. Sometimes she wonders, when she's bored, just how many laundered credits are funding the lights and the heating and the hot water that runs ice cold every five minutes.

"My contact in the Order sent me a comm yesterday," he begins. His voice is all hushed and excited. "They've caught wind of a huge shipment of bombs being transported to— guess where."

Jess shrugs, wide-eyed. "Naboo?"

He glares at her. "D'Qar."  _Oh._ "Yeah, exactly."

"Okay?" she says, drawing out the  _kay_. 

" _So_ ," Nien continues, gesturing with his hands theatrically, the way he always does when he's getting worked up over a job. "My contact wants the ship hijacking and the cargo sent to the Order." Then he sits back, against the foot of the bed and it lands on Jess' shoulders with a thud she feels rattle her bones. "Who do we know who can hijack a Resistance ship without a single trace?"

It seems too good—and too terrifying—to be true. "You want me to send bombs to the First Order."

He cocks his head. "You'll be paid well."

"How much?" 

Nien's eyes glide over to the pile of crystals. "More than that."

She raises an eyebrow, a challenge. "How much more?"

"A lot more," he says. It sounds like a promise.

Her mind is made up before he even speaks. Call it greed, call it beginner's arrogance, whatever you will; Jess doesn't know what it is, really. She just knows that holy kriff, the galaxy is starting to learn her name. It's something she'd always dreamed of but now it's happening and it feels so big and so endless, it might just swallow her whole if she isn't careful. Responsibility is bearable in small amounts but having the Order on her tail—that isn't something she ever wanted to sign up for.

But then—

She's never stolen for the Order before, but Nien is the most convincing person she's ever met, he's taught her almost everything she knows and he can make you do anything without even having to lie: can just look at you and you'll do it. Only twice in their entire friendship has Jess ever seen him look this excited; both times it has left her feeling like this, a ball of adrenaline and anxiety, because this is a dangerous job and it is not often her life gets put on the line.

The point is, Jess knows what the Order does to people who don't keep their end of the deal.

(She knows what the Resistance does, too.

When she tells Nien this, he laughs it off and says,  _I'm sure your Jedi girl will look out for you,_ and she laughs too but something deep inside of her hopes that maybe, just maybe, that is exactly what will happen.)

 

-

 

At first, the shipment goes smoothly.

Rey sits up on a datapad for hours after the ship—an MC80 Command Cruiser with enough turbolasers to blast Hux into the next solar system—sets off from D'Qar, piloted by a droid with a few more firewalls up this time.

She watches it travel across the galaxy. It's just passing Lorona when it veers off course, takes a gentle left.

 

Rey feels her through the system, from all the way away in the tiny living quarters of the Resistance base. Even silent, even between the bunks, she can feel her, the force of her—deep, like a thunderstorm. It's definitely  _her._ Her signature is as unique as a fingerprint; Rey can feel it in the way the droid's cogs stick, the way the ship turns in space ever so slowly, expertly as to not alert any nearby satellites. So precise, so careful yet so—in your face. So blatant to anybody who is actually paying attention.

 

She thinks of her; gorgeous, even in the dirt-filled light beams that spilt across everything in Corellia's spaceport, made it look almost angelic. Made  _her_ look almost angelic. 

Whoever she is, she'd looked at Rey with this edge of _fear_ that took Rey several rewatches to notice; curiosity, mostly, but fear too. Perhaps it was the lightsaber. Perhaps it was the Resistance pin on her tunic, tangerine orange against the white. 

This is kind of funny to Rey—she used to be the one who feared what she didn't know.

She was so beautiful, Rey thought, staring at her. She could feel the speed coming off of her, like a cloud of electricity; she felt like gravity, pulling all eyes in, towards her. It made sense that she would to this woman, too: that they would act on this strange push-and-pull of elemental forces, that it would be a battle even if they couldn't speak to set terms.

"Who are you," she almost begs. It's a silent whisper to herself, but also a plea to the stars. She knows her face well, well enough to pick her out of a crowd again: hard eyes, soft lips. But a face isn't a name, isn't a location or an occupation or a favourite food or  _anything_. It's just a face. It's just something Rey can replay in her head and study until it's just a mess of shapes, bitty from abuse, unspooling like a pulled thread.

 

The ship pulls into Corellia on the holo-map.

She almost laughs in triumph, but for a moment she shudders with that first impact, feeling the touchdown of the cruiser from systems away. The smell of hyperfuel is all around her, sticking in her hair and her eyes; she stills herself, and breathes in.

Poe appears. His head sticks out from around the door. "Rey?"

Rey sighs, doesn't look up. "They got it."

He deflates to half his size, right there in the hallway. Then— it's replaced with something else. Something angry. "Was it her?"

A knot solidifies in her throat when Rey nods. It feels like she's snitching. It feels like a betrayal.

 

-

 

"Right," Poe says, pointing to an orange dotted line on the holo-map. Transparent blue planets are hovering around them, fading and flickering as he moves. "This is the first one I could find. A First Order purchase of blaster fuel cartons, setting off to where the Supremecy was docked—" His finger traces the path. It worms through an asteroid belt, dips below Bestine. "—until it curves upwards and pulls into Corellia."

Finn is sat at a desk, his feet swung up. "Okay."

He tracks another path—this one green. "And then this huge amount of spice stolen from the Hutt Cartel a few month-cycles ago. A bit of digging on the HoloNews and it turns out Coronet City had a massive increase in spice-related incidents—"

Rey has to laugh at that; her sides are starting to hurt. " _Spice-related incidents._ " Finn breaks at that moment, too; a belly laugh that sounds like music.

"Oi," Poe says. His voice is stern and his hands are on his hips. "Come on. This is serious."

 

They're all in the command centre. Poe has had Artoo pull up every map in his memory and track every weird disappearance or rerouting of cargo transports in the past year-cycle. The poor droid had nearly combusted with all the data.

The room smells like stress and strong caf. Finn says, "How do we know it's even her doing all of these?"

Poe cocks his head towards Rey. She's sat lazily in a spinning chair, hair falling in loose waves around her face. "Because she's in love with her."

Rey blinks. She probably misheard. "I love _you_ more than anything, Poe."

"Could've fooled me," he retorts, but he's grinning that grin and she can practically  _hear_  Finn's heart quicken about twenty beats per minute. The Force sighs like Cupid, watching from the heavens with his bow and arrow.

She frowns, straightens up in her chair. "She's been doing this for a year."

Poe nods. "At least."

"How is it we haven't noticed her until now?" It's more of an internal question. More like:  _why did I only start dreaming about her now?_

The pilot drags his finger across a screen, the map zooms in to the Corellian sector and planets blossom like flowers. Corellia is in the centre, luminous, textured. It sends ripples down Rey's nerves; tiny electric shocks. "She's clearly amazing at what she does."

Finn laughs again; it's one of those laughs that you could never feel offended by, it's too nice. "Wow, I felt your pain when you said that."

"My teeth hurt from how hard I'm clenching them right now."

"Alright, alright," Rey says, standing up. Multi-coloured paths snake between various planets like tangled wires, from Tatooine to the Tion Cluster to the Argazdan homeworld. Red and blue and pink and purple, all threading back to the same point on Corellia: that kriffing spaceport. "Well, at least we know where she lives, or at least where collects her cargo from."

Finn stands too, joins her at her side. His face is crumpled. "I'm still not convinced it's one person, you know. No offence to your—Force-ness, or anything, but this is a lot for one person to do and slip completely under the radar."

Poe nods. "I thought the same," he says. "Especially when she started hijacking Order shipments. Hux wouldn't have taken that lightly."

"There's no link, other than they all go to Corellia. And it's like Leia said, every criminal who's ever been a criminal goes there at some point."

"For all we know, this could just be Hux trying to disguise his thieving so he doesn't trigger any rebellions."

"Good point. The last thing he needs is a war with the Hutt Cartel, they'd eat him alive."

The holo-map flickers off, on again. In fact, all of the lights in the base do: for just a second everything goes dark. Then it all starts back up again with a sigh and a whir and Rey is stood there, her fists clenched, her face uncharacteristically stony. She feels white-hot, suddenly. Her skin is itchy.

 

"It's her," she says. It doesn't sound like her voice.

Poe and Finn exchange a look.

She says again, "It _is_ ," before storming out, into the fresh air. The door slams by itself behind her.

 

-

 

Finn finds Rey an hour later in the cantina, eating copious amounts of jifcake.

He sits opposite her; he keeps his feet under the table and she keeps her hands to herself, prodding at the sponge with a fork. There is still steam coming out of her ears but it's okay, because Finn has never been afraid of Rey, not even when her Force abilities kicked into overdrive and everybody started looking at her differently. He never did, and she's grateful for that, more than he'll probably ever realise.

"Hey," he says, quiet, gentle. "Are you okay?"

She raises an eyebrow and flicks the fork in his direction, scattering crumbs over his face and jacket. "I've poured basa root flour over you before," she says. "Just so you know, I'll gladly do it again."

"Lovely." Finn doesn't look bothered, he couldn't if he tried. For such a strong a man he is, his soul is made of the same stuff that clouds and Narglatch cubs are made of. "Did we— I'm sorry we upset you."

Rey sighs; the fork falls to the plate with a clatter. "You didn't  _upset_ me. I don't know what came over me."

He looks at her with those big eyes. Finn has gorgeous eyes, black and bottomless. She thinks, he and Poe are possibly the most handsome couple in the entire galaxy. "I didn't realise how riled up this thing got you. I thought Poe was bad."

She makes a little face, mouth twisted to the side. "It's not the smuggling," she begins, "I mean, it is, don't get me wrong. But it's just—I  _know_ it's her." 

"Okay," he says. "Can you explain how you know, or—?"

A second passes, then Rey shakes her head. "It's really weird. And I don't know anyone who would understand it, not like I do. I don't think it's even a Force thing. I think it's a  _me_ thing. But Finn, I just need you to trust me. "

"I do." A hand reaches across and nicks her fork. "You know I do."

She can tell he means it.

"Thank you," she smiles.

He takes a large bite of her cake with a satisfied moan. "Of course," he says, through a mouthful of crumbs.

 

"We're going to have to come up with more of a reason to blame her than  _you've got a hunch_ , though."

Rey's comfort-eating eventually descends into them ordering every dessert off of the menu and laying it across the table like some sort of party spread. She pours them two stiff mugs of caf with two shots, his with blue milk. 

"I mean," Finn continues, "we don't even have a name, yet."

She considers this; he isn't wrong. Despite the presence of more Force-sensitives in one place than since the Clone Wars, many of the crew are still sceptical about the Force, about the ones who can use it. It exists like some ugly rumours in the darkest parts of the galaxy, still a dirty word.  _Jidah_.

Rey says, "She isn't working with anyone. When I saw her, there weren't any cartel marks or symbols or anything."

"Good start. Big question: why is it a woman?"

"Um—" Her eyes flicker downwards, thoughtful. "Because nobody expects a woman. Not when it comes to smugglers, or pirates. Or Jedi. She'd be able to go around without looking too suspicious, especially on somewhere like Corellia."

"And we know what she looks like," he considers. "Thanks to you swooning over—"

She kicks him under the table, lightly. "Hey."

"Oh, sorry—you staring into her eyes across a spaceport whilst stars and rose petals fell from the sky—"

Her fork is covered in icing and it gets on his face when she jabs the ends into his cheek. " _Listen_." And he chuckles, moving her hand away but holding onto it and suddenly she feels a lot more human than she has in quite a few days.

"She isn't on any Galactic Authorities records, and the First Order has never heard of her."

"Hmm," she nods, "so we need to focus on what we know."

"And what do we know?"

 _Oh, kriff_. Rey leans back heavily into her seat, her head is whirling; the words tumble out of her mouth with such rehearsed ease, it's almost pathetic. "She's young, just a bit older than me. She must speak multiple languages if she's stealing from all across the galaxy. She knows her way around the HoloNet, more than most smugglers, so she's good with technology. Especially droids. Good with mechanics, too—that swoop bike she was on had been modified. Either way, I'd say she's learnt to look after herself, so she probably ran away from home when she was young and started smuggling to keep herself afloat. I mean, nobody goes to Corellia by choice, do they?"

Finn blinks at her, dumbfounded, and Rey kind of wants the ground to open up and swallow her whole. "Too much?"

He nods; tries to control his face, but this is Finn. As if he could.

"Too much."

 

-

 

Bela Vistal is honestly the prettiest place Jessika has ever seen. Not that that's saying much for a girl who grew up on Dandoran, and spent a year scuttling around the underbelly of Coronet City but this is—something else. It's a mountain city nestled in the south-east, serene and quiet and beautiful. There's a geyser in the centre of the village and the air doesn't smell like smog: Jess takes one look and thinks,  _kriff_ ,  _I would die here happily_.

 

Her cottage is very small and comfy and brown. She lights a fire and sinks into the warmth, feeling her cheeks go pink.

It takes about three days for her to become utterly, incredibly, stupidly  _bored_.

 

-

 

Rey is playing Dejarik with Ben when her eyes glaze over.

"She's moved," she whispers, out of the blue; her hands go lax against the holograms. She looks like she's in some sort of trance.

Ben doesn't hesitate. "Rey, what is it," he says, taking her shoulders. "Who can you see?"

"I— I don't—" Rey shakes her head, the distant expression vanishing. The interior of the Falcon comes back into focus but she can still feel the falling snow in her hair, catching on her eyelashes. "The smuggler. She's on the move."

Ben swallows and sits back down, brow furrowed. He understands the Force, the tricks it can play. It isn't much but he sends some comfort to her, a sense of reassurance he hopes Rey feels, and she does. It wraps around her heart and makes her smile.

 

The woods around the base are really nice. The edges are black and singed from the Order attack but when you get deep into the foliage, it's quite beautiful; there are trees Rey has never seen before—tall pines wreathed in stardust, gnarled old figs with personality dug into every purse and knuckle, gnark trees with silver leaves that catch the sunlight and shatter it into fractals. Sometimes, when things get a bit much, she comes here and lets her enchantment overwhelm her in a way only a girl from the desert can feel, for a soft planet cloaked in perpetual plantlife. 

She looks up at the canopies; her smile falls at the dour presence beside her. "You could try and enjoy it. It's not hard."

Ben rolls his eyes, tips his head back. The sunlight floods onto his face, bright and yellow.

"Hey," he says. His voice is softer than Rey is used to. This is the voice he reserved for her back when they were just beginning, trying to figure each other out. "Talk to me."

"I tried looking for her again, yesterday," Rey says, quietly. "Through the Force."

Ben blinks. "Ah. That's what that was. I thought I felt something."

"I couldn't find her," she admits. The heat on D'Qar is dry but here, in direct sunlight, it feels like gold running down her hair, splashing across her shoulders. "I'm not usually like this." Her hair is in its three buns, the bottom one loosening. "All—weird."

Ben says, "I know." He doesn't know what Rey was like when she was on Jakku but he has a feeling it was something like this: lost, worried. Looking at everyone like they're about to leave her, like they already have. 

Rey had wide, unsure eyes now. "I don't know why the Force is connecting us the way it is."

"You think it's the Force," he comments, in a voice that makes it clear he doesn't believe that for a second. "So, she's Force-sensitive?"

"I didn't  _feel_ anything from her, but—" She's clutching at straws, she knows it. "Oh, I don't  _know_ , Ben."

He smiles at her, a tiny little thing. It's small and careful; he's trying to be more careful around her. Rey isn't delicate by any means but their fallout was ugly, all those months ago, and they're still both reeling from it. "You're still learning about the ways of the Force, Rey," he says. "You don't have to know everything yet. Unless, of course, this isn't a Force thing at all."

"It isn't," Rey sighs. "It's not a Force thing at all."

 

Ben runs a hand through his hair and pads deeper into the forest, out of the sun. It's a bit darker down here, more humid. The air smells like fresh soil and sugar. 

"You should try to find her," he suggests, "if she's stealing from us."

"She's stolen from us twice," Rey counters. "She's hardly a one-woman cartel."

"Okay." Ben is looking at her, and he looks so young in this light, so carefree and untouched. All those years of fighting the Force has drained him but here amongst the trees, they could almost be back on Coruscant in the blown-apart cantina, his red lightsaber blazing in his hand and his Force signature a volatile little thunderstorm in his chest. "But if you don't, the Order will get to her first. And stars know what they'll do to her if that happens."

 

-

 

Nien shakes his head. "Do you remember what happened to him? Probably dust in the Tatooine desert by now." There's no meanness in it, no accusation that's sincere, anyway. It's been a long time and they had kriffed each other over in so many different ways, Jess and—

"No," she sighs. "Poe Dameron is smarter than that. He's alive, somewhere."

 

The crystal geyser in the centre of Bela Vistal is a tourist hotspot. Jess can understand why. It's peaceful, a black jagged rock with water falling like curtains down either side; studded with roses, held together by vines like parcel string. 

They are sat on the edge of the fountain. Spray hits the back of her neck, makes her shiver a little.

"Still in the Resistance, you reckon?" Nien asks, raising an eyebrow. Jess had told him a butchered version of what had happened that night the day after, hungover over a stack of hotcakes.

She nods. "His entire life was about that fleet. You know how sharks need to keep swimming or they'll die? He's kind of like that with flying."

It's snowing, again; Bela Vistal is a lot further south than the Blue Sector, it sometimes escapes her just how  _big_ Corellia is. How so many climates can clash on one planet, snow three-feet deep one on side and desert coating the other. Jess tightens her coat around her—new, very nice—and smiles.

Nein says, "He'll know your Jedi girl, then."

Her smile falls.

"I thought the Resistance would have fought back by now," she admits; she's not losing sleep over it or anything, but there are nights when she lies awake and wonders,  _what's going on._ Wonders,  _what are you thinking._ "Considering nobody was ever brave enough to steal their cargo before."

Even though Nien doesn't say anything, his demeanour shifts to one of tightness; his shoulders become a straight, stressed-out line. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out—

Jess stares. "That's my face."

"That's your face," he says.

"That's such a terrible picture."

"I know," he snickers. Jess elbows him, right in the ribs. "They must have made it themselves, on some HoloNet site."

Something doesn't add up. "But—" The poster is small and crumpled, the corner ripped off from where Nien has obviously snagged it from a wall. "I've always been careful, there's no trace of me on the HoloNet for this reason. 

It's a doughy-looking face, like somebody has moulded it out of the clay, but the likeness is— _striking_. The constellation of freckles across her nose, the scar through her left eyebrow. Little details sometimes even Jess forgets she has, looking in the mirror in the morning and blinking  _oh._

Nein says, "Somebody in the Resistance knows exactly what you look like. My credits are on Poe."

"No." The realisation sinks in like—like dawn seeping in, or something. Slowly, slowly, then all at once: before you even realise it, the sun is up and bright and it makes Jess' heart kriffing  _soar_. "No, I didn't have that scar when I met Poe. This is— this is her. This is  _Rey_."

 

Her face starts to hurt with the grin. It's been weeks, she'd almost forgotten that Rey can make her feel like this:  _alive._

Nien takes one look at her and lets out the biggest, most exasperated sound he can manage. "I swear, you're going to finish me off someday."

 

"She's after me," Jess breathes. Her snow is red, frost-bitten.

"Yeah," Nien says.

"She knows who I  _am_."

" _Yes._ " His voice is stern; unimpressed. "That shouldn't be such a turn-on."

Jess scowls and slaps him on his arm. "Shut up."

"Jess," he says, pointedly, and it doesn't sound like how he usually sounds so Jess listens. Nien is fun until he isn't. "I'm saying this as a colleague, and a friend. You need to be careful."

She rolls her eyes, "I'm always careful." She's not, but, you know. She could never be careful where Rey's concerned; she would let Rey do anything and she wouldn't mind. Rey could take the stars from the sky and Jess would say  _it's fine, take them. They're yours to keep_.

 

-

 

The second job Jessika ever pulled off was an entire ship. Ambitious for an amateur, but she knew she was up for it.

She still misses that ship. It was a GR-75 medium transport vessel, cheap and cheerful. Barely two-thousand credits on the market if you bought one used. This particular joint was moving chak-root from Erysthes to Coruscant for whatever reason—processing, probably—but she hopped into a cruiser and found it cornering Onderon. 

It was a beautiful thing, in its own way: whip-sharp, seamless. It didn't take long for Jess to override its controls and send it speeding off to Corellia.

 

Nien was waiting there. He was younger then, less wrinkled.  _You're a pilot at heart, aren't you_? He'd asked Jess, when she went to get paid.

 _I guess so_ , she'd said.  _This pays better, though._

 _You like this one?_ The GR-75 was still sat there, inconspicuous and uninteresting.

She cocked her head, saw it in a different light.  _It's something I'd take apart and put back together again. I'd add things to it. I'd make it unstoppable._

It had made Nien grin like he'd just won the Corellian lottery. He waved his little hand and the ship's engine started up, the droid inside it pressing buttons. Jess heard it like she hears all things with engines; chirping, joyous and sweet as its wings caught the air, pulled it up and up into the sunshine until it was gone.

 _Work with me again,_ he said,  _and the next one, you can keep._

 

-

 

"When is the First Order next shipping things out?" She asks Nien a few hours later. The alcohol of choice this afternoon is Whyren's Reserve, stolen from the local bar.

He takes a sip and his face folds in half, almost. "Ooh, this stuff is strong."

"It's expensive, too, so don't waste it." They are in her house; the fire is roaring, making everything shine orange. "Go on, tell me, you know all these things."

 _The kriffing Order_ , he thinks, setting his cup aside. "Why? Who would you sell the cargo to?"

Jess shrugs; this is Corellia, she could dump the shipment in the middle of Coronet City and watch people descend on it like fire ants, for all she cares. "I'm sure you can find someone."

"Mmkay." Nien already knows where this is going; it's not like he can do anything. Jess has always been an unstoppable force, and he is no immovable object, not when she has her heart set on something. "And—why the Order?"

"I'm bored," Jess says, and she sounds— _honest._ "I want something to do."

 

It turns out that the Supremacy is sending an Endurance-class carrier—poorly-armed, poorly-shielded, not made for the threat of gunfire—to a newly-made Worldcraft floating somewhere in the Trax sector, near Deysum III. Hux's recent discovery of Worldcraft and their potential to perform as military bases, training worlds has had him creating them as far and wide as possible, placing them around the galaxy like drops in an ocean. The one near Deysum III is tiny, unguarded; when Jess locates it on her datapad, she can barely see the rocky surface for the congregation of stripped-down ships, turned inside-out on the wasteland.

It's carrying droids, of all things; computer hubs, things sprouting wires. An inconspicuous cargo, if it wasn't from the biggest network in the galaxy.

When Jess hacks into the ship's system and reroutes it to Corellia, it's almost too easy. Kriffing Hux. She almost  _wants_ him to find her; at least then she can ask him why he's such a shit Supreme Leader, why he can't even guard his shipments properly. She'd love to say it to his face. She'd love to wipe the smirk from it.

 

It'll take a while to reach the spaceport. A day or two, at least.

That night, Jess lies in bed and thinks about the first time she lost a ship: that ship Nien had promised her, a T-70 X-Wing that had been found crashed on a planet somewhere, fixed up to brand new. She was five jobs in, barely nineteen; she had not been prepared even though she should have been, and she liked it so much even though she hadn't had it long. It had been fast and agile and got her out of so many sticky situations, it had saved her, it had—

It had destroyed her, watching it go up in flames, that metal scream ripping through the entirety of her, knocking her to the dusty plains. 

 _Little girl,_ a Hutt said to her in broken Basic, once she'd staggered to the nearest village,  _what happened?_

Jess choked on smoke inhalation and heartbreak and said,  _I took a wrong turn and something shot me down. I didn't realise this was Hutt territory._

 _I see._ It was an exhalation, an acknowledgement. He believed her.  _It happens more than you think._

She looked out across the sand; it was such a desolate, hopeless place. The two suns were burning orange cut-outs in the sky.  _What planet is this?_ She didn't feel like she was in her own body; she felt like molten scrap, burning out. 

 _Tatooine,_ the Hutt told her. He stank like pondweed, especially strange on a desert land.  _Where are you from?_

She could feel the heat radiating from the ground, rippling, invisible.  _Corellia_ , she said. It took a lot to not say Dandoran. She thought, perhaps it would hurt too much. 

There must have been something in her voice, in her eyes because the Hutt observed her for a moment or two before he offered a slippery, slimy hand and said,  _come on, pateessa, I'll find you a ship. We'll get you following Smuggler's Run, you'll be home before you know it._

Jess sighed and let him pull her to her feet, like she weighed nothing at all.  _You're very kind_ , she said.  _Kinder than most._

It was—still is—rare to find a nice Hutt. His sickly yellow eyes crinkled when he smiled and as far as she can remember, it was the only time anybody in the galaxy had been nice to her unconditionally. No ulterior motives, no nothing: just nice.

 

-

 

The Resistance is congregated around the command base for their daily recap of what's happened during the night-cycle. The holo-map is up, and everyone's eyes are flickering absently-mindedly from planet to planet until Poe sits upright, his spine pulled taut.

"Look, look," he says, a finger poised. There's a red dot streaking through the Corellian sector, just rounding around Tinnel. "Look."

Every muscle in Rey's body tightens; it almost  _hurts_ , the rush of energy that floods through her. It feels like static.

And then everybody is looking at her. She realises, they're waiting for confirmation. Kriff, it's actually bizarre that  _this_ is her official role in the Resistance now: smuggler-hunter, _specific_ smuggler-hunter. A hired hound, sniffing out those dark eyes wherever they turn up next.

 

After the second cargo transport was stolen from them, Rey had spent the whole night awake. BB-8 turned on his lighter beside her, the warmth weak but enough to soothe the cold that always comes with fatigue, half-hoping, half too caught up in everything to care about Hux, or the shipment or anything else, really. The droid had babbled to her to keep her focused: quiet beeps and hiccups, so she didn't drown in her own thoughts.

She was cross-legged on her bunk; BB-8 told her, excitedly, how much he loved Artoo, in the way that artificial intelligence _can_ love, because Artoo could drive circles around bigger, shinier, more expensive droids. Rey had figured she might as well start recognising that feeling, a kind of love-slash-worship that only stuck itself to curious souls, because she was already starting to feel it blossom deep inside of her somewhere.

 

Rey blinks. It hits her like a maglev train, right between the eyes: she's  _there_. Sitting on the floor, fingers tapping carefully on a datapad. She looks fresh and healthy, cheeks stained pink with fire heat, hair pulled back in a rough braid and Rey can taste it again, lingering between her teeth—urgent, inconsolable _want_.

And then she's gone. Faces of all species wait, expectant.

"What do _you_ think?" Rey asks them, pointedly.

The ripple of  _well, then_ spreads across them all like a shockwave. 

 

When the meeting finishes, everybody is starving. The smell of hotcakes wafts over from the cantina and ugh, Rey could eat a whole stack of them  _with_ frill syrup and juna berries; it is a time of day she always looks forward to, all of them sat around the table, tucking in. Pouring each other caf and passing the sugar bowl.

"Right," Luke says, eyes darting around. "Well, if that's everything—"

It's Finn who notices it this time. "Hang on," he says. The holographic planets disappear into him as he walks, crosses the entire galaxy with just a few steps. "Hang on a sec, just—please say that is what I think it is."

The red dot is on the move again. It shoots out of Corellia, heads south; passes Naboo, so fast it must be in hyperspace.

"That's—" someone begins.

Poe's jaw hits the floor. "Is that—"

"Open the landing bays," Rey says. "Open the kriffing landing bays." Everybody scrabbles, the room fills with the sound of shoes squeaking against polished floors and panic. Rey's heart is pulsing so hard, she can feel it in her temples, in the base of her throat. "Open them. She's sent it to us."

 

-

 

The ship docks. It's moderately-sized, bares all the marks and dings of a ship not particularly treasured, expendable. Poe frowns—it always bugs him, to see a ship not kept in perfect nick. It's an inside joke amongst the pilots that he'll never have kids because why would he, when he can wrap a ship in a blue blanket and feed it hyperfuel from a bottle.

"They're all droids," he tells them. Metal frames of all shapes and sizes: astromech, dome-shaped and portable; interrogators, black and spherical; even a protocol one, silver-plated with hollow eyes. Tons of them stood in lines like footsoldiers, eerily lifeless. It gives everyone the creeps—it conjures images of the First Order, the rows of white troopers standing to attention beneath Hux's raised fist. "Literally—all of them."

Finn frowns. "Hux sent droids across the galaxy with no guards?"

"There's a dampener on its signal," Rey says. Usually she can feel passing ships, but now no matter how hard she concentrates, she can't hear the crackle of electricity in this one's system. "He probably thinks it's us doing it."

"Okay, then," he says. "Next question: why has she sent them to us?"

BB-8 rolls in then, chirping like a bird. Something about planet destroyers, something about plans—

Rey goes pale. "Oh,  _kriff._ "

 

They unload the droids and get them into the base, quickly, before any ships can descend onto them and blast the planet to pieces—again. 

Ben finds it. It's hidden in a DUM-series pit droid, enclosed in its mechanical hand beneath orange metal fingers: this tiny little stone. Well, he says it's a stone: closer inspection shows it to be more of a pebble, smooth and shiny. Bright red, red like the salt on Crait, red like fresh blood. It radiates an energy which nearly propels the Force-sensitives into the next dimension. Suddenly Rey feels weightless. Suddenly she is thinking of mountain-tops, of sunsets. The bubblegum skies of Wild Space. 

"I've seen one of these before," Ben says, handing it to her. Electricity spreads through Rey's palm. "On Coruscant, in the souvenir parlours."

Rey doesn't need to ask the Force; it tells her, happily. "It's a Corellian love stone," she says. Her voice is shaking, ever so slightly.  _Turn it over_ , the Force says, so she does: fancy cursive stares back at her, carved into the surface by a careful hand.

_all yours, min larel._

"Min larel," she echoes.

Ben's face untightens; it relaxes like something has just slotted into place in his head, like the world suddenly makes sense. "It's Old Corellian," he tells her. "Often used by smugglers as code—my father speaks it pretty well. But it's mostly used to send secret messages because it's such an exclusive tongue." He swallows, his chest falls. " _Min larel._ It means,  _my love._ "

 

-

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again, nothing much happened...... i promise it gets better (by better i mean gayer)
> 
> [Dartiss-5 Caravel](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Dartiss-5_Caravel)  
> [Harvest Festival](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Harvest_Festival)  
> [Kor Vella](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Kor_Vella/Legends); [Bela Vistal](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Bela_Vistal), Corellian cities  
> [Zephyr-G swoop bikes](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Zephyr-G_swoop)  
> [Starhopper](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Starhopper)  
> [Mashra](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mashra)  
> [The Denarii supernova](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Denarii_Nova)  
>  _Sky-touched_ means crazy, usually reserved for starfighter pilots  
> [Mygeeto](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mygeeto/Legends), a planet with rich nova crystal deposits  
> [MC80 Star Cruisers](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/MC80_Star_Cruiser/Legends)  
> [Holomaps](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Holomap)  
> [Basa root flour](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Basa_root_flour)  
> [Galactic Authorities](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Law_enforcement_agency/Legends)  
> [Dejarik](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Dejarik/Legends)  
> [Crystal Fountain of Bela Vistal](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Crystal_Fountain_of_Bela_Vistal)  
> [GR-75 medium transport](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/GR-75_medium_transport/Legends)  
> [Chak-root](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Chak-root)  
> [Whyren's Reserve](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Whyren%27s_Reserve), an expensive Corellian whiskey  
> [Endurance-class fleet carrier](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Endurance-class_fleet_carrier)  
> [Worldcraft planets](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Worldcraft), artifical worlds usually created to be storage facilities or military bases  
>  _Pateessa_ is [Huttese](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Huttese/Legends) for "friend"  
> [Droids](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Droid/Legends)  
> [Corellian love stones](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Corellian_love_stone)  
> [Olys Corellisi](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Olys_Corellisi) (Old Corellian)

**Author's Note:**

> yes, this fic is inspired entirely by _killing eve_ because i'm gay
> 
> say hi on [twitter](https://twitter.com/bartonholla) and [tumblr](https://turnerkanes.tumblr.com)!


End file.
